Water Damage

As I've been saying, I've been struggling with my priorities and with finding time to write. And by finding time to write, I mean on projects I can sell or on one or two personal projects which basically involve anthologizing all my stuff.

Three inspiring things today makes me want to find time again, although I still just don't know how.

Thing 1: Sunday is the day that Aish goes live each week with new articles. One in particular this week got me to thinking.

Thing 2: I started an article awhile ago that I really care about. But before moving forward with it, I wanted to get an old and dear friend's "permission." I'd like to publish it ultimately, but didn't want to invest too much time on it if she's not okay with me writing about her. We spoke today and she cleared it.

Thing 3: Went to our storage room in the basement today to pull out some things for a garage sale through our shul and to find books I can take to my classroom and organize this week. I hadn't realized that we had some serious water damage in one corner of the room. One box was almost totally destroyed. This contained all of my flute and piano music, my vinyl children's records, and a few other picture books. The pictures below of are the two items I'm saddest about losing.




Next to that box was one labeled "creative writing". It hard far less damage, but some mildew ate its way through a few sheets and rusted some staples on old writing. I spent some time going through the pile and of course couldn't bring myself to throw anything away. I really want to archive all of it. I moved it to a new box and separated the moldiest stuff so it won't infect the nicer stuff.

I think my new attitude is that I will try not to force myself nightly to work on these things, but will accept that sometimes I want to write and sometimes I don't. Disciplined writers don't talk that way. They force themselves daily. But I just don't think I can afford that right now time-wise and emotion-wise. I'd rather trust myself to WANT to do it sometimes, and to find away when those times come. As it is, I have two specific writing goals by the end of the summer, and I bet I can meet them. I will get to them after I finish my meditation website which is another major goal.